


Or Sometime Past My Dyin' Day

by NienteZero



Category: Leverage
Genre: Multi, Supernatural Elements, The death in this story is in no way permanent, leverage ot3 is totally established, slightly cracky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 06:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4950169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NienteZero/pseuds/NienteZero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot makes the greatest sacrifice and then talks his way right back to life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Or Sometime Past My Dyin' Day

The bullet that would have killed Parker ripped right through Eliot's heart. He fell knowing that Parker and Hardison would make it safely away from the firefight. Hardison was already flooring the van, and Parker had scrambled in the back, but that one shot would have hit her, so he had to dive and take it, hitting the asphalt as the tires on the van screeched away.

There was a darkness, then a light. He could feel nothing happening when he tried to make his muscles twitch. He couldn't smell anything, or taste even the blood that must have welled into his mouth. He could see though, a figure coming down toward him, an angel coming to take him? That didn't seem real likely given the life he lived.

As the figure came closer he heard the heavy beat of enormous wings and took in significant details. Furred boots, a chain kirtle, iron spangenhelm, big old flaming axe.

She leaned in toward him, and Eliot felt the distinctly weird sensation of the parts of him that weren't his body being heaved up and thrown over the winged shoulders in a fireman's carry, while his body lay in bloody ruin on the ground.

"Wait," he said, "Ma'am. Are you planning on takin' me to Valhalla?"

"You have been called to drink Odin's mead and stand beside him at Ragnarök," the Valkyrie said, "stop wriggling or I'll drop you, warrior."

Eliot shifted around, trying to get used to the sense of no body, combined with the sense of metallic feathers tickling his discorporate nose. 

"I ain't ready to go yet, Ma'am. I've still got family to protect, weregild to pay for things I did." 

He hoped that would appealed to the Valkyrie's sense of law. 

"Is there some kind of deal we could cut?" he asked.

The Valkyrie hovered. Eliot took in the sensation of being in a realm of starlight with a great gold hall full of sounds of laughter and song floating in the distance. 

"Well. It is unusual, warrior. What would you offer, to stay in the world of men?"

"I'll tell you what I'll offer," Eliot said, his voice full of gravel and steel, "You put me back down, alive, so I can take care of mine, and when Ragnarök comes I'll be right on the front line with your boy Odin. Or, if you drag me off to be Einherjer, I'll find all my old buddies in Valhalla, we'll go find ol' One Eye's throne, and I will gouge the other eye out with my ghostly frickin' thumb. Do we have a deal?"

There was a rippling wave of deafening sound, a scandalized laugh that was a bell bigger than the entire universe chiming, condensed down to the cheerful roar of a sturdy norsewoman.

"Warrior, I'll be happy to have you at my back when Fenrir is howling and Jörmungandr shakes the seas. Until then, fight well."

The journey back from being carried, disembodied, over the shoulder of an immortal winged warrior, to being flat on the ground where he'd fallen, felt exactly like being dropped from an extremely great height.

Eliot groaned and ran his hand over his body. The bullet wound was gone, and the world was solid again, the smell of blood and gunpowder, the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. He sat up in time to see Lucille Three scattering the last of the bad guys. As Hardison steered the black van past him, Eliot leapt to his feet and took Parker's outstretched hand, rolling through the open rear doors.

"Where are you hit?" Parker demanded to know.

"Just a scratch, darlin'" Eliot said.

"But- there was blood everywhere, and you fell," she said, running her hands over him with a worried look.

"Yeah, babe, we thought we'd lost you," Hardison added from the driver's seat as he expertly steered them toward a safe house. "You sure you're okay?"

Eliot sat down in one of the seats facing Hardison's surveillance equipment.

"Got the wind knocked out of me, that's all," he said. It felt real good to be back in his own body. But he could feel something new, a golden thread beating through his veins, a new strength.

He'd promised Sophie he'd take care of his two darlings 'til his dying day. Well, now. It seemed like that day might be a long, long way off.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what to tell you. I'm having an insomniac night and I just had a moment of "what about when the Valkyrie comes to take Eliot to Valhalla?"


End file.
